Jimmy Fallon Family History

James Thomas Fallon, better known as the TV talk show host Jimmy Fallon, was born on September 19th, 1974 to James and Gloria Fallon in Brooklyn, New York.  Jimmy grew up, however, in Saugerties, a small town on the Hudson river about a hundred miles north of New York.

He has described his childhood as happy.  He developed an obsession with the late-night comedy program Saturday Night Live and he and his sister Gloria would re-enact the sketches.  He dabbled in impressions, started playing the guitar, and went on to perform comedy and music in contests and shows.

Jimmy attended the College of Saint Rose in Albany, but dropped out in 1995 to move to Los Angeles and pursue a career in comedy.

His love of Saturday Night Live soon brought him back to New York.  He was an SNL cast member from 1998 to 2004 and became well-known for his comedy sketches.  In his latter years there, he co-starred in a skit The Barry Gibb Talk Show alongside musician Justin Timberlake, where the duo portrayed the Bee Gees brothers Barry and Robin Gibb.

In 2009 Jimmy returned to TV as the host of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC.  He moved from that show to become the sixth permanent host of the long-running Tonight Show in 2014.

Irish Fallons in Brooklyn

Jimmy’s Fallon line in America began with Thomas Fallon from county Galway who had journeyed to New York in the early 1870’s.

Shortly after marrying Louisa Stickevers – also from a Galway family – in 1878, Thomas swept her off to Pittsburgh where she had their first child (a daughter named Maria who died when she was only four months old).  Two more children followed before the young family moved back to Brooklyn in the mid-1880’s.  The baby of the brood, born in 1889, was Jimmy’s great-grandfather William.

Thomas worked all his life as a laborer, mostly as a handler in a lumber yard.  The fact that things were tight was evidenced by the family’s plot in Holy Cross cemetery. Even though Louisa lived until 1908 and Thomas until 1924, there is no headstone for them.

In 1914 William Fallon married Mary Ann Monahan, also of Irish immigrant stock.  They raised six children to adulthood.  Hints of the origins of Jimmy’s playful and occasionally mischievous humor might be seen in a poem his great-aunt Geneve wrote about her younger brother Joseph that appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1933.

• “My little brother who is only eight years old,
• Never does what he is told.
• I believe he’s very bold.
• For my mother has to scold
• Because he never does what he is told!”

Geneve’s two older sisters were the first to break the tradition of marrying fellow Irish.  So it may have been no surprise when her brother James married Louise Schalla from a German immigrant family in 1946.

James obviously got along with his Schalla in-laws, well enough that he moved in with them upon taking Louise as his wife.  But sadly this cozy arrangement didn’t last very long.

Louise’s father had asthma, prompting him to construct a makeshift apartment in the basement because he could breathe more easily there.  Louise rose one morning in 1947 to get a bottle for her nine-month-old firstborn, only to detect the smell of gas. She dashed downstairs to her parents’ subterranean abode.  What she discovered was later starkly spelled out on their matching death certificates: “found on bed in cellar of home, having been overcome by illuminating gas from open gas jet on range.”

Her son James Jr, Jimmy’s father, spent his adolescence singing in street-corner doo-wop groups before serving in the Vietnam War.  He married Gloria Feeley in 1972.

Shortly after Jimmy’s birth, James started working as a machine repairman for IBM in Kingston, New York.  As a result the Fallon family that had been settled in Brooklyn for nigh on a hundred years made the move out of the City.  They went north to Saugerties, a small town close to Kingston.

Jimmy Fallon’s Family Tree

• Thomas Fallon from Galway in Ireland (1857-1924), arrived in New York in 1874, and m. Louisa Stickevers (1856-1908) in Brooklyn in 1878
• – Thomas Fallon (1883-1947)
• – Arthur Fallon (1886-1958) m. Ella Jessen
• – William Fallon (1889-1954)

• William Fallon m. Mary Monahan (1888-1940) in Brooklyn in 1914
• – Martha Fallon (1916-2002)
• – Louise Fallon (1917-1960) m. Walter Fabian
• – Mary Fallon (1918-1992)
• – James Fallon (1921-1995)
• – Geneve Fallon (b. 1922)
• – Joseph Fallon (1924-2001)

• James Fallon m. Louise Schalla (1921-2005) in 1946
• – Barbara Fallon (1947-2016) m. Miguel Nieves
• – James Fallon (b. 1948)
• – Kevin and Mark Fallon

• James Fallon m. Gloria Feeley (1949-2017) in 1972
• – Gloria Fallon (b. 1973)
• – James (Jimmy) Fallon (b. 1974)

• Jimmy Fallon m. Nancy Juvonen from California (b. 1967) in 2007
• – Winnie Fallon (b. 2013)
• – Frances Fallon (b. 2014)